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Spice is officially banned in Russia

Russia's bureau of consumer goods control is ready to put "more control" over used-to-be-legal smoking mixes. A week ago Russia's Surgeon General issued a ban on sales of certain legal brands said to contain "plants and thier parts possessing narcotics-like action".

Currently falling under abovementioned ban are AM-HI-CO, Dream, Spice (Silver, Gold, Diamond), Zoom, Ex-ses, Pep Spice, Yucatan Fire containing in particular such plants as Salvia divinorum, Argyreia nervosa and Nymphaea caerulea. According to SG, those mixes were declared as household chemistry products and aromatherapy mixes. But some plants in those compounds are toxic and cause LSD-like high. They are, according to our research, addictive and fall into Shedule III and IV.

Saratov's military institute of biological and chemical safety and Russia's Food and Health institute conducted the research. Results clearly stated that "parts of researched compounds possess psychotropic, narcotic-like effects, cause hallucinations, are toxic and generally unsafe for the public".

Onishenko (Surgeon General) had difficulty estimating current spread and popularity of those mixes in Russia. His concern could be well timed as Spice was recently banned in France after JWH-018, synthetic cannabinoid was found to be present in it. It acts the same as THC, the active marijuana component. In december 2008, Germany banned Spice as sheduled drug.

In Russia as in many other countries most of the sales take place in the net. Yandex.ru, one of the most popular Russian search engines gives over 45000 links, most of them are online stores.